Columns

If you didn’t make it to the Shallotte Rotary Club’s 13th annual Law Vegas Night this past Saturday night, you missed an entertaining evening.

I’m not much for gambling, but I’m all for seeing lots of friendly faces and putting faces to the names of people I hadn’t met yet — like Perita Price of the Cedar Grove Improvement Association, with whom I’ve been exchanging emails since I’ve been at the Beacon — while helping a great cause.

The vision of Brunswick County Streetreach is to see the homeless receive the best assistance available to fit their personal circumstances. As you are aware, we had several weeks during the month when temperatures dropped down into the teens, leaving our most vulnerable citizens facing life-threatening situations.

This, to me, is when the new year really begins in Brunswick County — not Jan. 1, when we’re still recovering from the holidays.

Last Tuesday, Jan. 16, was the Brunswick County Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting to kick off its plans for the year, an event preceded by the annual chairman’s awards gala Jan. 8. As a member of the chamber’s board of directors, I attended both.

As 2018 kicks off, there’s good news and bad news for retail sellers. The good news is that consumers opened their pockets wider for the Christmas holiday buying season than at any time in the last decade. Aggregate retail spending at the end of 2017 is expected to be up 4 percent to 5 percent when all the receipts are in.

Last week at the North Carolina General Assembly, we passed a major clean water bill in the House of Representatives, we had several oversight committees, including transportation, and I opened the first local district office in memory by a state representative in Brunswick County.

January is my busiest month of the year for making public presentations. People want to know what the economy will be like in the year ahead. For businesses, economic forecasts are important for production and hiring plans. Government officials want to know what the economy will mean for their tax revenues and public expenditures. And, of course, the relative strength or weakness of the economy is one of the key determinants of the availability, types and pay of jobs for workers.